by H. V. Elkin
Cassidy nodded and stood. “Guess the least I can do, then, is watch out for that man’s friends.”
“Much obliged, Butch.”
They shook hands. Cutler watched Cassidy go to the bar, say something to Baker, then lead the cowboy out the door.
Everyone in the saloon seemed to start talking at once. Then Cutler realized how quiet it had been. Some things happened so often, you stopped noticing them after a while and took them for granted. One of those things was how quiet it got in saloons when certain kinds of men came into them. It had happened when Cutler walked in. And it had happened when Cassidy came in with Baker. Maybe people thought there was going to be trouble and they had to stay alert to duck out of the way of wild bullets. But there was not much danger of that happening in Thermopolis. So it must have been something else.
Cutler did not know why it happened when he came in. But he had an idea why it happened for Cassidy, and probably Baker. The West was changing faster than a lot of people liked. It was getting to be more civilized than it had been in the old days. But there remained, like an underground current of some kind, some of the wild spirit that settled the West. Probably every new settler felt it, probably even the preachers and storekeepers and other men who wore neckties and seldom forked a horse. And when that spirit walked into a room, the people who had less of it got quiet. It was a mark of respect, not fear. It was this respect that helped keep men like Butch Cassidy alive. Folks secretly wanted to see Cassidy get away with his robberies, to get the better of the institutions that represented civilization—banks, railroads, stage lines—and maybe they felt as long as there were men like Butch Cassidy, the real West was still alive.
A man like Cassidy probably could have made a success of anything he turned his hand to, partly because he was the kind of man that others wanted to support and help succeed. And Cutler had no less respect for the man because they happened to be on opposite sides of the law. Cutler also relied on the odds that they would never meet again, was glad this one meeting had been on neutral territory.
The same spirit Cassidy represented and that Cutler respected was the spirit of the mustang. Before man came to the West, such a horse would have roamed free, collected all the mares he could protect, kept them so long as he was strong enough to defend them from other stallions and, in that world where the only law was Nature, there would be no one to call Mesteño an outlaw or a rogue. On the one hand, there was the law of Nature which told a mustang how it had to live. On the other hand, there was the new law of the white man which dictated that Nature no longer applied, and the white man had the guns to prove it. Cutler had once carried that kind of gun, until he lost his taste for it. Now he often found himself in the middle, looking for a neutral ground on which the laws of Nature and Man could live together. It was not a good place to be, and Cutler did not like it, but he figured somebody had to do what he did. And in that neutral territory where he had little company, Cutler was able to keep busy. When he could not keep busy . . .
Cutler poured himself another bourbon.
One moment Cutler did not exist. He was lost in the nowhere of deep sleep. The next moment he was wide awake, rushing suddenly into consciousness with no time to dream along the way. As always, there was that moment of disorientation when he was not certain where he was. That was more than the condition of a man who woke suddenly. It was also the condition of a man who seldom slept twice in the same place. Since he usually bedded down along the trail, in his wagon under the hanging traps or in a blanket roll on the ground, it was especially disorienting to find himself in a bed and in a bedroom. Then he felt the softness and smelled the perfume, and for once the loneliness did not appear as it usually did in the mornings. Even the hardness of his six-gun was softly felt through the pillow.
His hand moved over the pillow, over the spot where the gun was, and touched another smooth softness, Iris’ hair that reached toward him. He turned and saw her face, a face that slept peacefully and still had the flush he had helped put there when she was awake. In a moment, he knew she would sense he was awake, and she did. Her eyes opened suddenly and saw him. It was another thing they shared, that ability to be instantly awake. And ready.
He reached out for her and pulled her into his arms, and she pressed tightly against him. No words were necessary between them. They made love as they lived, taking everything a moment had to offer, never knowing for certain if there would ever be another. Cutler could never imagine being with Iris and not wanting her. Iris could not imagine Cutler being any way other than he was. He was a dependable man, and only Iris knew he was to be counted on in every way.
Later, as they lay there, he told her, “I’ll have to be movin’ on today.”
“Last night you weren’t sure.” She smiled. “Something I did?”
“You just make decisions like this harder to make,” he said and she kissed him for saying it. “I must’ve got the answer in my sleep.”
She nodded. “It happens that way sometimes.”
“It’s a mustang in Utah.”
“Oh,” she said and was surprised.
“Nothin’ I really want to do,” he explained. “But if I don’t, something worse could happen down there. Usually does when folks get mad enough.”
“They wouldn’t try poison, would they?”
“You never know when folks get mad and don’t know what they’re doin’.”
Cutler had been in many other places where people thought poison was the answer to their problems, and he would not work for anyone who wanted to use it. He had learned this attitude the hard way, just as his wife’s death had taught him the importance of checking traps every day. He had once put strychnine out for a coyote that was raiding line cabins. A rider who came through thought it was soda and baked it into biscuits. Cutler found the man rolling on the floor, screaming in convulsions and begging to be shot. He never used poison again. Poison was indiscriminate. It always killed more than it was intended for. And when that happened, you could set off a chain reaction against Nature. And when poison killed, rogue and innocent animal alike, it killed hard.
“John?”
He turned back to her. “Huh?”
“Oh,” she said. “For a moment there I’d thought you’d already gone to Utah.”
“No,” he smiled, “I’m still here.”
“And you’re not leaving right this very minute, are you?”
He pulled her to him again. “Not this very minute,” he said. “Not the next minute either.”
Chapter Three
The weather had turned warm by the time Cutler and Baker got to the Harmon ranch. Chase saw them coming in the distance, and he shook his head in disgust. “Mules!” he muttered. “A covered wagon!” One of the hands looked up from braiding a horsehair rope and saw the object of Chase’s disdain. “That him then?” he asked.
Chase shook his head again. “Well, it looks like Dave’s with him, so that must be the great man the boss figures we can’t do without around here.”
“Nice lookin’ horse bringin’ up the rear, though,” the hand said.
“Well, where would you be?” Chase asked him. “Sittin’ on that wagon or ridin’ the horse?”
“Well, hell, Tom, you know the answer to that one.”
“Okay, then. There you are.” He turned and yelled toward the corral. “Hey, boss!”
Harmon appeared around the corral fence. “Yeah?”
“Looks like the famous mule skinner’s comin’.”
“What?” Harmon came up to Chase and looked where his foreman was pointing. “Can’t be Cutler,” he said.
“Why not, Ben? You ever seen him before?”
“No, I only know him by reputation.”
“Funny thing nobody ever told you Cutler rode a spring wagon like a settler. What’s that settin’ up there aside him?”
“Looks like some kind of dog.”
“No kind of dog that I ever saw before.”
“Me either.”
“Dale?” Harmon asked. “An Airedale?”
“That was it. Fella said it was good for huntin’. Said it could lick any other dog alive.”
“Well, I’ll tell you a thing or two,” Chase said. “That Airedale don’t look like it fits the description you give, any more’n that man on the wagon looks like what John Cutler’s supposed to be. I think Dave’s gone loco on the trail and brought us back a nester who wants to plant his butt in our brand new state.”
“One thing for sure,” Harmon said. “That’s Dave with him. Loco or not, that’s Dave Baker, all right.”
Chase sneered. “He’s the right color, anyway.”
From his seat on the wagon Cutler could see the men waiting for him. He could tell by the way they stood just about what they were saying. It did not surprise him a bit. He was used to being gawked at by strangers. When he rode into a town for the first time his rig got him a lot of attention, like he was a circus parade. When he rode out, most folks looked at him differently. Cowboys were especially arrogant towards anyone who was not riding a horse. And he imagined he was a strange sight to people with limited experience.
A cowboy who only knew horses might not recognize that Kate and Emma were the best pair of matched mules they might ever see. Sleek, black and strong, they had pulled the wagon over terrain where many a horse would have lost its footing. They might not have the speed of a horse but they were indispensable in rough country. Once Emma had carried Cutler up a cliff picking her way over narrow footholds that a man might not see, and helping Cutler escape from a band of renegades who were out to kill him. Kate had done the same for a man he was riding with at the time. When the horse was winded, a man could always depend on Emma or Kate. The mules looked the same, and they pulled the wagon like a good team, but their personalities were different. Emma was serious and hard-working. Kate had a sense of humor, so you had to let her know who was boss. She knew Cutler was boss, but if a tenderfoot tried to tie a pack on her, she would swell out her sides, and later watch the tenderfoot try to figure out how a tight pack got loose. But a cowboy, like a tenderfoot, would look at Kate and Emma and only see two mules who were not horses.
The Airedale was named Red, sometimes called Big Red. He looked gentle. But a cowboy would be foolish to try climbing up on Cutler’s rig when Red was set to guard it. Then he would see the strong white teeth and the rippling muscles that made this seemingly gentle dog so formidable. He was a good tracker and had the spirit that would keep him on a trail long after he had worn the pads off his feet and they were bleeding. In many tight situations, with Red along, Cutler never had to draw his gun. After a while, an hombre would know that once Red came after a man, there was only one thing that would keep those teeth from ripping out a man’s throat, and that was Cutler’s command to stop him.
Even a cowboy, or especially a cowboy, could appreciate the quality of the bay gelding in the rear, the horse called Apache. Cutler had never known a fresh horse Apache could not outrun, even after Apache had run several miles. If catching Mesteño was going to mean chasing him, Apache was the only horse Cutler knew of who had a chance of catching the mustang. But this the cowboys could see, even from a distance. They had no arguments about the horse, only the idea of such a horse following a wagon. Running with lesser horses in a remuda, sure. But following a wagon pulled by mules with a funny looking dog on the seat? No, that was demeaning to the horse.
A cowboy might not understand about the wagon, either. Maybe the wagon most of all. He associated such a vehicle with settlers who came across the prairie in long trains of wagons like Cutler’s. Cutler’s was smaller, of course, but a covered wagon was a covered wagon. It could mean nesters, which could result in Indians getting nervous and causing trouble for everybody including the ranchers who had already made peace with them. It could mean Mormons bringing their strange ways into the West. At the very best, it could be a chuck wagon, and although the cook was indispensable on a cattle drive, he tended to be near the bottom of the social scale in the cowboy’s mind, not quite as important as the wrangler, and a little bit above the hand who drove the chip wagon picking up dried cow dung in areas where firewood was scarce, or the hand who drove the blatting cart for the calves born on the trail and who was known as Little Mary or Nursey.
The cowboy would not have any appreciation for the fact that the wagon was Cutler’s home, that it carried everything Cutler needed to exist and survive on the trail, everything he needed in his line of work. Maybe as the wagon rolled along with its jingling sound, a cowboy would think of a country peddler, the man who rode through selling pots and pans, or another who sharpened knives. But the sound came from objects more lethal than cookware. Hanging along the hoops that supported the wagon canvas, but hidden from view to the observer, were the traps. An arsenal of steel jaws whose clankings and jinglings sounded a little like cowbells. A lot of Newhouses and a few Oneidas. Some single-springs for mink and otter. Double-springed number twos for foxes, fours for bobcats, coyotes and wolves, fives for cougars and black bear. And the largest of all, the great toothed bear traps that Cutler had designed and had custom made, the ones that were waiting for the day when he would find his grizzly.
The traps did not have the meaning to Cutler that they did to the old-time trappers who helped settle the West. Cutler never used them to get hides for profit. They were carried for only two reasons, for food when he needed it and for capturing rogue animals who were a threat to other life, the animals who had abandoned the rules of their kind and who killed out of madness.
The same could be said for the guns. The Colt .44 Cutler always carried in his holster, the .30-.30 Winchester saddle carbine and the Krag .30 caliber high-powered repeating rifle that traveled in a special rack behind the wagon seat. They were never used for amusement, never for the sake of killing or capturing trophies, only for protection and bagging rogues. Except sometimes the rogue happened to be a man. Sometimes the track of a rogue animal would lead to a man, and Cutler’s guns had been turned on men more times than he cared to remember. He did not count. There were no notches carved in the guns. You did not keep score about things like that.
The rest of Cutler’s gear included a bedroll on a woolen mattress, a bin for provisions for himself and Red, another for the horse and mules, a water barrel, and the battered leather suitcase that always held a change of clothes for whenever he reached the end of the trail.
No one would be able to recognize what a perfect team the man and the animals were. No one would know that they had become so used to one another that a slight movement in the reins would bring Kate and Emma to a standstill or start them going again, that the dog sensed every feeling his master had, that the horse was the other half of the man and Cutler rode Apache so that from a distance man and animal looked like one, double-headed machine.
Cutler knew that it was in the nature of others not to sense what lay beneath the surface. It did not bother him that the men were staring at him and not understanding. Cutler knew. And that was all that mattered.
As David Baker rode beside the wagon, he felt a part of the team that was Cutler, animals and rig. He knew what the cowboys were thinking as they watched the procession approaching the ranch house. And he was used to it, too. In his case, he had experienced similar reactions from them at times when he rode up alone. Some of them reacted to the color of his skin in the same way they were reacting to the look of Cutler’s outfit. In the old days it had rankled Baker, but as time went by he became hardened to it and finally felt pride about it. He no longer wanted to be totally accepted by his white neighbors. Now he was glad to be different. He could rope and ride with the best of them and, if it came to that, he knew he could best any man around in a fight, but he no longer fought for acceptance. Instead, he accepted attitudes toward him, and he wore his difference like a badge of honor. Now he took extra pride
in sharing his difference with a man like Cutler, knowing from their days on the trail together that he had come to understand what made the trapper special and knowing that the people who were watching them approach might never find it in them to understand. For the first time, Baker did not feel alone.
“I can see the welcomin’ committee.” Cutler grinned at Baker. “You want to go on to your ranch from here, guess I can handle what’s ahead.”
“If you don’t mind,” Baker said, “I’d like to ride in with you.”
“Don’t mind at all. Glad to have you.”
The welcoming committee was getting bigger. A bunch of the hands started joining the group, staring, shaking their heads. One of them looked like a boy to Cutler, but a little more looking and he recognized a woman’s curves hidden beneath the man’s clothing and an excess of bay-colored hair tucked up inside her sombrero. Her attitude did not seem to be any different from the others. Something about it made Cutler smile.
It was the smile that bothered them most of all as the wagon pulled to a stop near them. Any greenhorn could see they were not feeling friendly. And to pull up in a rig like that, the least the man could do is look a little more humble, if not ashamed. But this man was smiling like there wasn’t anything out of whack at all.
Chase felt obliged to correct the situation. “If you come to squat,” he said, “all this land’s taken up.”
Cutler laughed and shook his head in disbelief.
“Something funny, nester?”
Cutler grinned at Baker who smiled back. Then Cutler stared back at Chase, rested his arms on his knees, waited and said nothing.
“I asked you a question, nester,” Chase said.
Cutler nodded to indicate he knew the difference between a question and some other kind of greeting.
